


Think Grateful Thoughts

by Thalius



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Flirting, Fluff and Humor, Kanera Week 2020, Pre-Canon, Tumblr Prompt, odd jobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:48:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26226649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thalius/pseuds/Thalius
Summary: Kanan and Hera don't always get the most glamorous jobs.
Relationships: Kanan Jarrus/Hera Syndulla
Comments: 14
Kudos: 74
Collections: Kanera Week 2020





	Think Grateful Thoughts

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Day 1 Prompt for [Kanera Week 2020](https://kaneraweek.tumblr.com/) on tumblr - stolen moments / making each other laugh.

“I always forget to bring a pillow,” she muttered.

Hera swatted away a persistent mosquito, trying not to lose her temper. The sun had finally set, which meant they didn’t have to be as careful about staying hidden, but it also meant Baston was extremely late. Again. She hated working for him, and the only reason she didn’t write him off entirely was because he usually paid well. 

Usually.

Shifting again on her belly, Hera moved up an inch to see if that was more comfortable. It wasn’t, so she held in a sigh and looked through her binocs again. The roads were empty, meaning he was at the very least still thirty minutes away. 

Hera dropped the binocs in the grass and pressed her face into her arms, closing her eyes for a minute and trying to think calming thoughts. It was too humid and hot to be comfortable in her flight suit, which only added to her already cantankerous mood. This was the last time they hauled for Baston, she promised herself. No matter how hard up they were for cash.

It was an easy enough job—smuggle his haul past the Imperial security checkpoints in the system to dodge tariffs. He was very insistent about never coming into direct contact with his contractors, a security measure she was more than happy to accommodate for, but that put them in the position of having to wait for his goons to complete the supply drop. And they always took their sweet-ass time with it, something that very conveniently wasn’t negotiated into their pay. She had half a mind to just go back to the  _ Ghost _ and take a nap, but if they returned here and the drop was gone, they’d have to reimburse Baston for damages, something she would rather die than deal with.

A pebble dinged off her shoulder, making her look up. Kanan was about fifty metres downwind from where she was, visible only because she knew where to look. He blended in well with the craggy brush surrounding the cliff’s edge—when he wasn’t sitting up to throw rocks at her, that is.

She held her hand out in a  _ what? _ gesture, and in response he scrunched his face up, sticking his tongue out and giving her a thumbs down to express how much he was over this gig.

The grin that spread across her face was begrudging at first, but she couldn’t find it in herself to hold onto her frustration when he was making that face. She was too far away to see the way his skin crinkled around his eyes when he scrunched his nose, but she could easily imagine it. And if his intent was to brighten her mood, it was definitely working.

Hera blew a kiss at him in return, and he collapsed dramatically to the ground on his back, throwing an arm over his eyes. She covered her mouth to hold back a laugh, and he peaked up at her with a grin of his own. 

It was too risky to use a comlink or datapad on the cliff like this, so they were limited in how they could communicate. And while Kanan was usually focused and frosty during missions, they’d been sitting here for five hours waiting for the supply drop. The boredom was getting to him, too. 

_ Pay attention, _ she mouthed then, pointing to her eyes and then the road. He tossed her a salute and rolled back onto his stomach, but with enough flair to let her know he was hamming it up.

Biting her lip, Hera reluctantly turned back to the road, trying to keep Kanan out of her mind. It was the entire reason they’d split up on the cliff in the first place—having him lying next to her with nothing to do but kill time would lead to a lot of very unprofessional distractions. Distractions that, she now realised, would have had no impact on them collecting their haul on time, but that was a dangerous line of thought.

_ Later, _ she promised herself—and Kanan—before grabbing her binocs again to glare at the road.

* * *

Baston’s men took another forty-eight minutes before they finally arrived. Knowing that neither of them could jump down into the clearing to scream at them about their chronic tardiness no matter how much they deserved it, she instead opted for a very passive-aggressive flash of her datapad to confirm they were in position above and ready to pick up the haul when the men left.

“I feel a hundred years old,” Kanan complained quietly as he made his way up to her, taking care to keep low and stay out of sight. 

She rolled onto her side and watched him climb up the rocks. “You look pretty good for a hundred.”

He paused to look up at her, a dark brow climbing up his forehead at the comment. “The secret is to only smoke a pack a day,” he told her, recovering from the compliment and groaning as he pulled himself up onto the ledge beside her. He settled on his back and let out a heaving breath, letting his legs splay out. His boot knocked against her calf. “That’s free advice by the way,” he said, looking at her. “I won’t charge you.”

Hera rolled her eyes. “How generous of you.”

“I’m a generous guy.” He rubbed at his eyes. “Those assholes almost done?”

She peered down into the clear. “Couple more crates,” she reported. “Shouldn’t take them more than eight hours at the rate they’re going.”

He shook his head, hand still at his eyes. “You know I used to have bosses that would shave off my pay if I took a piss for too long.”

She watched him with amusement. He looked about ready to fall asleep. “Maybe we should be more authoritarian next time Baston hits us up.”

“Nah, we need a new guy to harass,” he reasoned. “Baston doesn’t respect us enough.”

“Maybe give him a little demonstration and he’ll change his mind,” she said, reaching down and flicking the top clip of his lightsaber. 

He pulled his hand away from his face to grin at her, letting it rest on his chest. “I thought you said to keep a low profile.”

“I’m in a mood.”

“Are you ever.” He flipped himself then, resting his weight on his elbows as he glared down into the clearing, where the men were now closing up their transport trailer. “Fucking finally.”

They watched the men pile back up into the transport and peel off towards the road again, driving at a leisurely pace that made her blood boil. 

Kanan stood up beside her once they were out of sight, groaning some more, and then offered a hand down to her. With how stiff she was, she took it gratefully, and made just as much noise on her way up. 

“Never again,” she muttered, making sure her supply pack was slung securely on her back, and then stepped willingly into the circle of his arms. At least this next part was fun.

Kanan vaulted them both off the edge of the cliff, keeping a firm grip on her belt as he did so. She remembered a time when, before she met Kanan, she’d have to make her own way down from this spot by scaling the cliff face, adding at least another twenty minutes to the job. 

They landed with a huff in the grass. It still jarred her legs to vault that far straight down, but Kanan’s special-little-problem, as he’d taken to calling it, prevented them from having to deal with broken bones or internal bleeding. 

“I remember you screamed the first time I did this,” he said, like he always did, and pulled away to go unearth their hidden trailer.

“You didn’t  _ tell _ me you were going to do it,” she reminded him as she walked over the stack of crates, activating the grav lift on the nearest one.

Kanan shrugged goodnaturedly. “Yeah, but it was pretty funny.”

“After I realised I wasn’t going to die, yes.”

“Like how most good stories begin,” he murmured. Then he turned his full attention to the slab of rock in front of him and closed his eyes, holding his palms towards the sky as he relieved the rock from the constraints of gravity. Hera walked over to his side and began to pull on the trailer latch as he lifted the slab up far enough for her to wheel it out from under the little shelter. Another plus of working with a Jedi; she used to have to haul this thing out with her whenever Baston gave her work.

She used to have to do a lot of things on her own.

Kanan’s face was pinched with effort by the time she got the trailer out, and he sighed in relief as he set the slab back down with a heavy clatter. Unslinging her pack, she unzipped the top flap and tossed him a water bottle, which he deftly caught and uncapped with a grateful nod. 

While he took a breather, Hera began to load up the crates. This was the part of the job she relished the most; the quiet walk back to the  _ Ghost, _ which sat faithfully a few kilometres away under the watchful eye of Chopper. Not only did it mean she’d have the chance to finally stretch her legs, but she would also be subjected to all the thoughts that had been pinging around Kanan’s head for the last five hours, mercilessly cooped up, and those never failed to entertain. She’d always enjoyed doing this trek alone, but he had a habit of making his company preferable to the solitude that had been her near-constant companion for the past several years.

“I can see steam coming out of your ears,” he commented, making her look up. She’d been smiling down at one of the crates.

“Just thinking grateful thoughts,” she replied softly. He raised a brow, corking his water bottle and making a twirling motion with his finger for her to turn around. She did, and felt him tug at the zipper of her pack a moment later.

“Care to enlighten?” he asked, and she shivered as his breath blew errantly across one of her lekku.

“Actually, I was hoping you’d do the talking,” she murmured, turning back around when he tapped her arm. Standing this close together, he was very tall. “I’m kinda tired.”

He smiled down at her. “I can do that.”

She stood up on her tiptoes to kiss him, and pulled away before she got any ideas about keeping him here for the night. “Good,” she whispered, smiling back at him. “Now help me with these crates.”


End file.
